(I am an Invisalign MAB member and my son is receiving complimentary treatment but all opinions completely my own!)

If you remember, my son Noah is about to start orthodontic treatment using Invisalign. He just had his iTero scan and it was so easy that we thought it would be fun to share with you how it went in his own words.

Now, being a 15 year old boy who is mostly interested in archery and getting through high school, he doesn’t have all of the facts that a mom would want to know. For instance, it takes more than 2 weeks to get the aligners. It will be more like 6 weeks. And while he says something about scientists, I don’t know if it’s that’s how it actually works. But to him that seemed cool….so he grabbed onto that idea. I’m sure he has a mental image of men in white coats doing something akin to what they did in Jurassic Park with the DNA studies.

Isn’t he cute? (don’t tell him I said that…..)

We really wanted you to know how painless and simple the process was. I stood by and watched the technician do the scan and was fascinated by the level of detail she was getting with the scan. From a mom’s viewpoint, it was so great because it was easy on him and I felt confident that they were getting really thorough information. I could see the image the whole time and the screen next to him and it was so detailed…..I was amazed!

Next month we’ll share about his first experiences with Invisalign. I’ll share more then about how they work and ho you use them. If you have any questions about Invisalign let me know and I will try to find out the answers for you!

Again, I am an Invisalign MAB member and my son is receiving complimentary treatment. My opinions are completely my own and I only work with companies whose products I believe in. Click HERE to read the full disclosure statement.

(I am an Invisalign MAB member and my son is receiving complimentary treatment but all opinions completely my own!)

Next month my son Noah will finish with his pre-orthodontic device and start his Invisalign treatment. He gets his fancy scan done on our next appointment and will soon be wearing his Invisalign aligners. He is so excited about this….really thrilled. I can see his confidence increasing as his he looks forward to getting his teeth straightened.

It’s such a confidence thing. He’s a smart kid and not insecure about much, for instance his ability to build ships with random Legos….he’s got mad skills there. But his crooked teeth do bother him a little. Of course we teach him to be content with his looks and we don’t stress over physical imperfections. But James and I both know what it’s like to have very crooked teeth and we are glad our kids can get the orthodontic care they need to not only have straighter teeth, but easier to clean and take care of.

Having had experience with kids in both traditional braces and Invisalign, I am a huge fan of the clear aligners for their ease of use and my kids like them better too.

And I wanted to let y’all know that there is a sweepstakes until November 13th called Countdown to Confidence that you HAVE to go enter. There’s a daily winner of $100 and a grand prize of Invisalign treatment for your teen (or for whoever you want to use it!) and $1000.

Please go enter! I want one of y’all to win!!!

Again, I am an Invisalign MAB member and my son is receiving complimentary treatment. My opinions are completely my own and I only work with companies whose products I believe in. Click HERE to read the full disclosure statement.

It has been a full few days with furniture rearranging and friends and dental appointments. I may need a whole day’s nap to recover.

Last Saturday my girls decided to go out for some thrift store shopping, so I was left alone with the 4 younger boys. It was either going to turn into a Lego-fest or I could use their future man muscles for the greater good, so I decided to have them help me rearrange some furniture. I promised them the whole afternoon to themselves if they would help me.

I needed to use some of the junk I bought recently so we brought it in the house to figure out where to put it. While we were at it we cleaned under the couches and dusted everything. The amount of dust in this house could fill a king sized mattress.

I had an old fridge (don’t ask me why I bought this….it just spoke to me) and a worn section of fence to put somewhere. So I would point, “Let’s try it over here” and we kept moving things until we got it how I liked it. This is not only an opportunity to help Mom, but a lesson in future husbandness.

We put the old fridge in the corner and hung our metal letters over it. We are keeping blankets in the fridge. The irony is not lost.

I moved one of the couches back to make the room seem bigger. I used old footstools behind it to keep it from pushing back against the window.

Over the other couch I hung a fence section. I like putting something extra big over that couch. It makes the low ceiling feel taller.

When James saw the fence he immediately said, “You paid money for that?! We probably have everything you need to make one in our trash wood pile!” Yes, but for $10 this one is done.

To make room for the fridge I had to remove some things and put the TV on a dresser that was a little short. Plus I needed a place for the DVD player and Wii. So I had one of the boys throw a little shelf together with junk wood. It’s perfect and James is happy we used the wood pile.

The piano stayed where it was….it just got a little accessory update.

The rest of the house got picked up and straightened too and we settled into Saturday afternoon all relaxed and ready for the week.

On Sunday after church we drove to Austin for my parent’s 51st anniversary. We hung out at my sister’s house for a few hours then headed home to get ready for a day full of company the next day. It was fun to all be together. With the kids all growing up we don’t go out as a whole family much anymore. Our 15 passenger van was wondering why we hadn’t taken it out for a joy ride for so long.

Monday was a simple time of friends and burgers on the grill and kids running around making too much noise. Everyone left by 9PM because I had to get up early the next day for a dentist appointment.

I’ve been dealing with some tooth issues for a couple of weeks, so I had been anxiously waiting this day. He thinks he figured out the problem and I am, hopefully, on my way to a pain free mouth again. Dental problems stink. That’s all I have to say about that.

Let’s talk about junk and furniture again. It’s a much happier subject!

This next weekend our family will be going to the Forge Conference. It’s great teaching, wholesome families and great fellowship. I’m looking forward to it! If you decide to attend please find me and say hello!!!

Now that we are back to a full school schedule life has taken on a busy, yet semi-predictable turn. No more lets-do-whatever mornings. It’s back to the military style of living where Mom blows the bugle at 7:00AM and demands pushups for anyone that doesn’t hop-to.

I realize I shouldn’t make military analogies since the only thing I know about it is what I learned from Gomer Pyle, Hogan’s Heroes and M*A*S*H. Probably not 100% accurate.

After a week of school we were all glad for Saturday morning when we could relax a little. But only until 7:30 because some of us wanted to go junking. Six of us spent a few hours trucking around looking for junk to bring home and reclaim into furniture and décor. Who needs Pottery Barn when you have trash piles and a good imagination? I found an old bed spring and some various yard salvage that I plan to use for my fall decorating. So stay tuned.

After a nap I spent some quality time with my pool net, skimming for leaves and dead algae. “You boys want to swim?! Hey, I have a better idea…..Let’s clean the pool!” For about an hour I scraped the bottom of the pool while the younger boys hung around the edges. Sure they wanted to swim in the middle, but that would have stirred up the scum so we played “Who can stay away from Mommy?” Elijah won. So he’s my new favorite child.

On Sunday it was the usual….go to church, come home worn out, sleep, play games, lie around and do nothing. But there was a small hitch in our plans. In getting the boys dressed earlier that morning I found in their drawers a pigsty of clothes and socks and belts that don’t fit anyone. So the later part of the day was spent cleaning that out.

Didn’t I JUST do that? How did it get messy again so quickly?! I’m about to whittle everything they own down to what they can fit in a foot locker and while I’m at it I might just bounce some quarters on their beds in the mornings. How long do you think the clean drawers will last this time? I am taking bets and whoever loses has to clean the bathrooms with their toothbrush.

Another little incident Sunday was that I got a couple of emails from people who ordered something from my shop and never got their order. It turned out that someone opened a shop on another site and used my shop name, photos, products, everything. It was almost exactly the same. People placed orders and, of course, their orders never came. They couldn’t find anyone to contact on that shop so they searched and found me, assuming I had a second store and they came irritated about not getting their orders. I am sure! I would be irritated too….except they never ordered anything from me! It was a scam. Trust me, when you order from my real shop you will get your order promptly and can always reach me if you have questions!

Where’s Radar O’Reilly when you need him? I need a guy who can get things done.

Salute!

(My apologies to any military people reading this. I have nothing but mad respect for everything you do!!!!)

Y’all will love this one. We did something different and made a little movie. It’s so much fun for us because we all worked together to make it (lots of us behind the scenes even though you don’t see us on camera!). This picture only shows who worked on the day of shooting, but the other kids helped too.

This is meant to encourage those of you who are tired or discouraged. There is always hope! God is ready for you to call on Him when you feel like you can’t take it anymore. It’s The Humbler Games…..

In my Summer Home Tour I showed you my boy’s loft bedroom. But I thought I’d show you it again with a little more of the details.

This room is so small, but we only keep the Legos and two beds up there, so it works.

There are mattresses on the floor at each end of the room. We got new mattresses and I am surprised at how comfy it is. I went to Target and got the dorm-bed-in-a-bag kit. They were happy to have matching bedding and it didn’t cost me much. I added a couple of accent pillows. Doesn’t every guy want throw pillows?

I decided to add red because I found these AWESOME red metal lockers at IKEA (my happy place).

The fence looking thing is the rail that you used to be able to see through from below. But with the room makeover we put luann in front of it so they have more privacy. To make the best use of the space we built a white shelf at each end of the lockers that faces the beds and one in the middle to hold all of their Lego books and manuals.

It creates one long surface for them to build their Lego creations.

On the opposite side of the room is the only wall. With one weird shaped wall you have to get creative about how to use it. We built shelves that were completely fitted to the wall and filled them with containers for the….you know what…..Legos!

Most of the containers I got at IKEA. Duh.

If you’re wondering what the wooden thing on the floor is….that’s the door to the room!

The boys have organized the Legos how they want, which is basically not organized at all.

I left empty spots on the shelves for them to put some of the things they’ve built.

I even added (again, IKEA) little lights on each end of the long shelf for them to hit when they need light in the night.

The whole room was done with 1x8s, paint and 1x2s for the brackets! It took some measuring, but we got a lot of storage in a small space and it doesn’t feel cramped because the middle is completely empty except for the seat cubes. They need a place to sit while they build.

If you like attic spaces, I’ve found some more really cute ones over on my Attic Makeover board on Hometalk!

Well, it took two days but we got the junk all out of my bedroom and the kitchen, which is our other nuclear fallout zone. Not only did we have the boys’ room cleanup to deal with, but as school approaches I am getting in a panic about the house, as if we can never straighten it once we get back to lessons. I don’t know why, but I feel like I have to clear the entire house of all clutter as if I’m nesting.

The birth of a new school year.

I’m also really happy to have an office for myself. I took what was our little study room (it used to be Noah’s Lego room until we moved him upstairs) and made it into my own office. If I am in there with the doors closed it means KEEP OUT. If I am not in there then the kids can still use it for quiet study.

The reason I couldn’t just use the room the way it was before is it had no door between it and the boys’ bedroom. That would have made it difficult to concentrate. So we built a door between the two rooms. When I say “we” I mean I designed it and bought all of the materials, my son built it and my daughters painted it.

Because the room is SO small I didn’t have room for a swinging door. So this slides along a track we built with a galvanized pipe and hangs from eyes screwed into the top of the door. It’s a simple 2×2 frame with chalkboard behind it. The back is a dry erase white board for the boys to draw on. I decided to make it floor to ceiling to add height to the room.

Open on the Left — Closed on the right

I put stationary casters on the bottom, which makes it super easy to open and close!

And now I have a place to work when I need quiet. It was either that or drive to an undisclosed location and work in the car with my computer mashed against the steering wheel and the A/C blasting in my face.

I still have a few small messes to deal with, but it’s mostly all back to normal. By “normal” I mean not normal at all because nothing ever stays the same around here for more than two weeks.

On Sunday I drove an hour and a half to meet my parents for lunch and handed off two of my daughters to help them for the week. It was a nice Sunday drive (we used to take Sunday drives all of the time when I was a kid, why don’t we do that anymore?!) and great to see my folks. I had the two youngest boys with me so as we drove home they started asking questions. “Mom, why would someone want to get married just for the sake of getting married?!” “How do you know if you’re old enough to get a job?” “Why does a church need elders?” I am not kidding. These were the questions. I mostly replied with answers like, “Hey, does anyone want some frozen yogurt?!”

One day you’re a woman with a clean bedroom and the next day…BAM! It looks like you live in an episode of Hoarders.

I try to keep my room clean, I really do. On Sunday nights I give it a really good straightening and put away everything that has accumulated through the week. I’m not really sure why Legos and other people’s belts end up at the foot of my bed, but I just take it as part of life and clean it all up.

Now, I love the part of this story where I wake up on Monday morning to a clean bedroom. I feel like a lady in a mattress commercial that stretches like she’s the happiest person in the world all because she slept on a Posturepedic (FYI: spell check keeps trying to change that word to “pedicurist” which seems like a big spelling leap, but now I want a pedicure because I am easily influenced. Don’t say the names of any food or I instantly want it. Except olives or cucumbers which I do not like. #random)

Like any good tale there’s a plot twist. This time it’s in the form of me deciding I need an office and we have to clean out three rooms to make it happen. And where does all of the junk and furniture that no one needs anymore end up? Yep. You guessed it.

We cleaned and moved and worked so hard and by Thursday I had a situation on my hands. Sure, I have a lovely new office but I also have an uninhabitable bedroom. I won’t be stretching my arms like the lady in the commercial. Because if I did I would hit the enormous pile of clothes that is next to me on the bed. And forget going to the bathroom in the night without turning on the lights. Toe….meet the bookshelf that wasn’t there yesterday.

Speaking of piles of clothing, WHY are there so many clothes in the boys’ drawers that don’t fit them?! We have very limited space. Four boys have their clothes all in one room which is also where we keep all of their toys and two of them sleep. Oh, and all of their books. Every inch is sacred. So when I opened THREE drawers to find them stuffed with clothes that NO ONE wears I kind of lost my mind. It’s like I could actually feel a little screw going loose in my brain, hairs turning gray and wrinkles creeping along my face.

It was just last weekend that I announced we might need to find a place to put another dresser in there because the drawers were all so full and I had already had them clean it all out. In their defense, none of them had any idea who was supposed to be using those three drawers so they never opened them, thinking they belonged to a brother.

We had a drawer intervention.

And now I have a mountain of boy’s clothes on my bed waiting for me to go through. I also have three pieces of furniture that I have to squeeze into the storage building, which is another touchy subject. Let’s just agree to not talk about it, mkay?

So guess what the theme for today is! It’s “Clean Mommy’s Room Day”! It starts with getting all of this junk out of my room and ends with happy Mommy buying frozen yogurt for everyone.

(I am an Invisalign MAB member and my son is receiving complimentary treatment but all opinions completely my own!)

I want you to meet my son Noah.

I don’t mention him much because he’s just easy and sweet and takes care of himself.

But he’s a typical Pennington. By that I mean he has orthodontic problems. I blame my husband. He gave the kids crooked teeth and I gave them OCD tendencies. So, so many things for our children to be thankful for.

Noah is 15 years old and child number 6. So by the time he needs something, I am practically an expert on the subject. Potty training? Got it. Swim lessons? Yep, I know the perfect teacher. Bite issues? Been there. Done that. Five times already.

We have, up to this point, had 4 kids in braces and one in Invisalign clear aligners. That was actually our first child and we loved the whole process. I wanted to use Invisalign with the other kids after her, but that was many years ago and I was told that they didn’t qualify. So we went the traditional braces route.

Then, a couple of years ago, I learned that Invisalign has come a long way and they now have a program specifically for teens. In fact, they have improved so much that I am confident that the rest of the kids will be able to use it. So I took Noah to be checked to see if he would qualify for Invisalign.

And to my delight, he does! He just had to have a simple device put on for a few months first to pull one tooth forward (you can see it in the picture above).

I want to take you along with Noah and I as we go through the Invisalign process so you can see what’s it’s like for him and for me. It’s very different than traditional braces. In fact, we changed orthodontists because the one we used for the past 4 kids isn’t an Invisalign provider. You can go to their website and find someone near you to have your teen evaluated!

Along the way I will share with you our experiences, good and bad, with clear aligners and I will be busting some common myths. But for now I will just share with you this very long infographic.

Again, I am an Invisalign MAB member and my son is receiving complimentary treatment. My opinions are completely my own and I only work with companies whose products I believe in. Click HERE to read the full disclosure statement.

For last weekend’s graduation party, we decided to build a new game. We had all ages coming, so we needed something everyone could play. I bought a sheet of plywood and some 2x4s and told my oldest son what I had in mind, but let him tweak it however he wanted. Here’s a picture tutorial for you…..

Cut a sheet of plywood in half & draw three sizes of circles.

Just use whatever you have for the circles.

Drill a hole inside of each circle.

Just make sure it’s big enough to fit a jigsaw blade into.

Jigsaw out the circles.

Easy.

Make each half the same.

Get out the 2x4s.

Cut four the size of the plywood, about 4′. Four at 3′, four at 4’4″ and the last two will be the finished width when you’ve attached them.

You can change the sizes. You just need four frames that are exactly the same.

Screw them together.

1, 2, 3, 4.

Screw those to the plywood.

It’s a great job for a son. We attached one more 2×4 between the frames along the back for stability.

One hour – done.

Two colors of paint is more fun than one.

I used a daughter for this job. We sanded the circle openings a little bit first.

I didn’t take pics of us painting the X on the front, but it was just painter’s tape and a sponge roller. Nothing hard. Then we sewed little bean bags with fabric scraps. They should be loosely filled. That’s a great job for an 11 year old. You could use balls if you don’t sew.

I made the numbers with plain paper and a die cut machine then just glued them on.

Then play.

At any age.

This was a hit for our party. After a while the older boys played by hiding behind the boards like forts and pelting each other with the bean bags. The younger kids ran around with the bean bags, there were lots of variations on the game.

It took a few hours and the total cost was $37 (but I already had paint and other supplies).